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re: "The fallout marks a substantial victory for the MPAA and its allies"

Not quite. It may appear a victory, in the same way one may abuse anti-biotics to keep some germs away. In reality this just helps to usher in the next generation of file sharing apps that will not be vulnerable to these types of legal weaknesses.

Its evolution plain and simple. It is clear now that the semi-distributed sharing systems may not be as vulnerable as the completely centralized Napster, but they still fall prey to sopoenas and lawyers.

Next generation systems evolving now will only be able to be stopped technically, and like the internet, will interpret censorship or legal attacks as network damage and will route around them with impunity.

I say bring it on. The day we can share any file we want as we wish with complete technical protection will also be the day we may have complete freedom of speech. The sooner the current weak systems die, the sooner we will see the next gen systems.

# posted by Anonymous 11:07 PM

But Todd, when you knock down all te laws and then find yourself staring face to face with the devil, what will you hide behind?

# posted by Bill 1:10 AM

This is just me, but if I *had* to be face-to-face with the devil, I'd have some kind of vorpal sword to even things out...

Seriously, though. The problem here is one of ability. The (RI/MP)AA gets sites shut down because they have the ability to. As long as there's a central node of some sort that you can point to, the operator of said node is begging for trouble, regardless of whether or not that trouble is his/her fault.

We're not talking about doing away with the laws, here, we're talking about letting people trade stuff (a'la substantial non-infringing uses). "Stuff" being a mystical, unidentified digital something that's often music, video, or computer programs, but could be absolutely anything else, which encompasses quite a bit.

Same thing that happened with Sony and Betamax: old industry (TV broadcasters, RIAA, MPAA) says "this technology will ruin us!". Yeah...VCR's *totally* killed off television.

# posted by drakaan 6:42 AM

Personally, I'd want a water gun loaded with holy water...

The unfortunate part is that the VAST majority of "stuff" does infringe. There is a section of society that believes it has the right to steal. The "AA" brothers were perfectly happy to let things go along until "the folk" decided it should become an industry. Be honest, if you thought someone was taking your livelihood away, wouldn't you fight back?

# posted by Bill 7:55 AM

Say what ? suprnova down ?? ha-ha-ha... As y'all know, there are places where the strong arm of American (in)justice can not reach, which reside outside the borders of US, but still one click away.

What I say is, bring them on... As the first poster said, this will lead to nothing but development of more attack (legal or illegal) proof systems for filesharing.

# posted by Anonymous 7:59 AM

I'd absolutely fight back. The **AA has a problem in that they are proceeding from the assumption that they can somehow stop people from sending bits of data across the internet.

Seeing as how the internet was made for sending data back and forth, they appear to be proceeding from a flawed assumption. Yeah, there is a lot of illegal stuff out there, and the reason for that is a mix of overpriced product and unethical (or unbothered) file-sharers. The fact that there are people using P2P for decent reasons that are non-infringing is barely thought of, but important.

I can't excuse the illegal sharing, but I don't have a lot of sympathy for the associations' ignorance and insistance on clinging to pushing movies and music exactly the same way they always have. Change with the times, or the world passes you by.

Print publishers got the idea many years ago and went with advertising, syndication, etc. Even the web media makes dough by being ad-driven. For some reason, the **AAs think they're above this, and file sharing, illegal or not, is ample evidence that they're living in denial.

They could come up with higher-quality versions that'd be a pain to download...they could allow cheap or free previews of partial or entire movies online to try to hook people. There are any number of things that they could do to make copying movies more difficult (if they wanted to invest the kind of money it would take to make it work, which they don't).

Are file-sharers hurting the RIAA and MPAA bottom lines? Yep. Can they stop the sharers in the US from doing it? Yep again...eventually, and at great cost. Can they stop file sharing everrywhere? No way.

The fact that they don't acknowledge this is kind of like the man bailing water out of a canoe after the front half of it has been sheared off. It's a valiant effort, but they need to face the facts and swim to shore.

# posted by drakaan 9:59 AM

As someone said earlier Beta/VHS did not kill the industry and cassette tapes back in the 70's did not kill FM radio or stop people from buying records and tapes. This is just about 1 thing and 1 thing only GREED!! As the great Gordon Gekko once said "Greed is good, Greed works!! Well, hopefully not for the RIAA and MPAA.

# posted by Anonymous 10:28 AM

I'd have to toss "Stupidity" in there was well. ("Greed & Stupidity" is one of our themes, of course.) They haven't learned anything from the examples of the past that you cite and they're alienating consumers.

# posted by Bill 11:26 AM

For the record, many Finish and other international law enforcement orgs are taking responsibility for the busts - some even indicating that Hollywood is not involved at all but simply using a little well timed 'spin'.

Wag the dog anyone?

# posted by Anonymous 11:55 AM

Said by anonymous :

I say bring it on. The day we can share any file we want as we wish with complete technical protection will also be the day we may have complete freedom of speech. /quote

Freedom of Speech is a right guaranteed by the U.S. constitution. Please don't call stealing "Freedom of Speech"

It's not.

# posted by Anonymous 1:33 AM

You're correct, stealing isn't freedom of speech, but freedom of speech isn't stealing.

Shutting down bittorrent sites because individuals are using it to steal is like outlawing color printers because people are using them to print fake 20 dollar bills.

In both scenarios, you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It's an effective solution to a real problem, it just isn't a good one.

# posted by drakaan 9:18 AM

re: Freedom of Speech is a right guaranteed by the U.S. constitution. Please don't call stealing "Freedom of Speech"

Freedom of Speech is much more than some right some govt may or may not recognize. Its a basic human right.

My point in my original comment, is that the day *ANY* or *ALL* govt's are unable to stop sharing of information, illegal or legal, is the day we will truly have freedom of speech. That day it will be impossible for anyone to stop anyone else from communicating anything they desire "legal" or "illegal".

That day is getting closer, for better or worse of corse everyone has an opinion.

My core point is that of evolution. Maybe it would be better for certain species to have survived in our opinion. The way this all plays out will not be based on legal ethics. It will be played out based upon powers that be. Just as WW2 and the Gulf War will not be won by ethics, but by the powers that be. Centralized, statist, distributed, no matter.

Its evolution. Right or wrong, survival of the fittest to survive, mutate, replicate. Genes, computer code, or memes.

Not much to argue about actually, more just to sit back and watch. Quite fun IMO. I think I already know who will win-

Both sides will win, but ONLY to the degree they adapt to each other.

# posted by Anonymous 10:43 AM

Re: Freedom of Speech.

I understand exactly what freedom of speech is and is not. I simply pointed out that it was guaranteed by the constitution. I never said it was granted or given by the constitution.

It was a nice try but the constituion will not protect you from conducting illegal activities, no matter how popular or easy those activities may be. You may run a concession stand in a whorehouse, but don't whine when you are put out of business because the illegal activities are stopped. It really rubs me the wrong way when people hide behind the constituion to attempt to justify doing something they know is wrong.

How many LEGAL file have you traded on Bitorrent? That's what I thought.

# posted by Anonymous 11:22 AM

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